The Grass Crown Read online

  A visit to the nursery was mandatory, of course. Drusus made much of his chubby, dark-visaged little boy, who was known as Drusus Nero, and was now almost two years old. Caepio merely nodded to his daughters, who flattened themselves in awe against the wall and said nothing. They were miniature copies of their mother—as dark, as big-eyed, as bud-mouthed—and had all the charm of little girls, had their father only bothered to look. Servilia was almost seven years old, and had learned a great deal from her beating after she decided to improve Apelles's horse and Zeuxis's bunch of grapes. She had never been beaten before, and had found the experience more humiliating than painful, more galling than instructive. Lilla on the other hand was an uncomplicated bundle of mischief—irrepressible, strong-willed, aggressive and direct. The beating she had received was promptly forgotten, save that it served to endow her with a healthy respect for her father.

  The four adults repaired to the triclinium, there to dine.

  "Is Quintus Poppaedius not joining us, Cratippus?" asked Drusus of his steward.

  "I have had no word that he isn't, domine."

  "In which case, we'll wait," said Drusus, deliberately ignoring the hostile look he got from Caepio.

  Caepio, however, was not about to be ignored. "Why do you put up with that frightful fellow, Marcus Livius?" he asked.

  The eyes Drusus turned upon his brother-in-law were stony. "There are some, Quintus Servilius, who ask me that question of you," he said levelly.

  Livia Drusa gasped, choked back a nervous giggle; but, as Drusus expected, the criticism went over Caepio's head.

  "Well, isn't that what I said?" asked Caepio. "Why do you put up with him?"

  "Because he's my friend."

  "Your leech, more like!" snorted Caepio. "Truly, Marcus Livius, he battens on you. Always arriving without any notice, always with favors to ask, always complaining about us Romans. Who does he think he is?"

  "He thinks he's an Italian of the Marsi," said a cheerful voice. "Sorry I'm late, Marcus Livius, but you should start your meal without me, as I've said before. My excuse for tardiness is impeccable—I've been standing very still while Catulus Caesar subjected me to a long lecture on the perfidies of Italians."

  Silo sat on the back edge of the couch upon which Drusus reclined and allowed a slave to remove his boots and wash his feet, then cover them with a pair of socks. When he twisted lightly and lithely onto the couch, he occupied the locus consularis, the place of honor to Drusus's left; Caepio was reclining upon the couch at right angles to Drusus's, a less honored position because he was part of the family rather than Drusus's guest.

  "Complaining about me again, Quintus Servilius?" asked Silo without concern, lifting one thin brow at Drusus, and winking.

  Drusus grinned, his eyes resting upon Quintus Poppaedius Silo with a great deal more affection in them than they held whenever he looked at Caepio. "My brother-in-law is always complaining about something, Quintus Poppaedius. Take no notice."

  "I don't," said Silo, inclining his head in a greeting to the two women, seated on chairs opposite their husbands' couches.

  They had met on the battlefield of Arausio, Drusus and Silo, after the battle was over and eighty thousand Roman and Italian Allied troops lay dead—thanks mainly to Caepio's father. Forged in unforgettable circumstances, their friendship had grown with the years; and with the bond of a mutual concern for the fate of the Italian Allies, a cause to which both men were pledged. They were an unlikely combination, Silo and Drusus, but no amount of complaining on Caepio's part—or lecturing on the part of some of the Senate's senior members—had so far managed to drive a wedge between them.

  The Italian Silo looked more Roman, the Roman Drusus looked more Italian. Silo had the right kind of nose, the right kind of middling coloring, the right kind of bearing; a tall man and well built, he was a fine-looking fellow save for his eyes, which were a yellowish green—and thus were unseemly, a trifle snakelike because he rarely blinked; however, this was not remarkable in a Marsian, as the Marsi were snake-worshippers and had trained themselves not to blink more than absolutely necessary. Silo's father had been the leading man of the Marsi, and after his death the son took his place, despite his youth. Moneyed and highly educated, Silo ought by rights to have commanded a great deal of respect from just those Romans who—if they did not blatantly cut him—looked down their noses at him and stooped to patronize him. For Quintus Poppaedius was not a Roman, nor even a holder of the Latin Rights; Quintus Poppaedius Silo was an Italian, and therefore an inferior being.

  He came from the rich highlands of the central Italian peninsula, not so very many miles from Rome, where the great Fucine Lake rose and fell in mysterious cycles having nothing to do with rivers or precipitation, and the chain of the Apennines divided to hedge the lands of the Marsi around. Of all Italian peoples, the Marsi were the most prosperous and the most numerous. For centuries they had been Rome's loyalest allies; it was the proudest boast of the Marsi that no Roman general had ever triumphed without Marsi in his army, nor triumphed over Marsi. Yet even after the passing of so many centuries, the Marsi—like the other Italian nationals—were regarded as unworthy of the full Roman citizenship. In consequence, they could not bid for Roman State contracts, or marry Roman citizens, or appeal to Roman justice in the event of any conviction on a capital charge. They could be flogged within an inch of their lives, they could have their crops or their products or their women stolen without redress at law—if the thief was a Roman.

  Had Rome left the Marsi to their own devices in their fertile highlands, all these injustices might have been less intrusive, but—as was true in every part of the peninsula that did not belong outright to Rome—the lands of the Marsi had a Roman implant in their midst in the guise of the Latin Rights colony called Alba Fucentia. And, of course, the town of Alba Fucentia became a city, then the biggest settlement in the whole region, for it had a nucleus of full Roman citizens able to conduct business freely with Rome, and the rest of its population held the Latin Rights, a kind of second-class Roman citizenship allowing most privileges belonging to the full citizenship, save only that those with the ius Latii could not vote in any Roman election; the city's magistrates automatically inherited the full citizenship for themselves and all their direct descendants when they assumed office. Thus had Alba Fucentia grown at the expense of the old Marsic capital, Marruvium, and sat there as a perpetual reminder of the differences between the Roman and the Italian.

  In olden days all of Italy had aspired to eventual owning of Latin Rights and then the full citizenship, for Rome under the doughty and brilliant leadership of men like Appius Claudius Caecus had been conscious of the necessity of change, the prudence in seeing all Italy eventually become properly Roman. But then after some Italian nations had sided with Hannibal during the years when he had marched up and down the Italian peninsula, the attitude of Rome hardened, and the awarding of the full citizenship or even the ius Latii ceased.

  One reason had been the swelling immigration of Italians into Roman and Latin towns — and also into Rome herself. Protracted residence in these places brought with it a sharing in the Latin Rights, and even in the full Roman citizenship. The Paeligni had complained of the loss of four thousand of their people to the Latin town of Fregellae, and used this as an excuse not to furnish Rome with soldiers when she demanded them.

  From time to time Rome attempted to do something about the problem of mass immigration; these efforts had culminated in a law of the tribune of the plebs Marcus Junius Pennus the year before Fregellae revolted. Pennus expelled every non-citizen from the city of Rome and her colony towns, and in so doing uncovered a scandal which rocked the Roman nobility to its foundations. The consul of four years before, Marcus Perperna, was discovered to be an Italian who had never held the Roman citizenship!

  A wave of reaction inside the ranks of those who governed Rome had immediately occurred; one of the leading opponents of Italian advancement was Drusus's father, Marcus Livius Drusu
s the Censor, who had connived at the disgrace of Gaius Gracchus and the tearing down of Gaius Gracchus's laws.

  No one could have predicted that the Censor's son, Drusus—who came young into the role of paterfamilias when his father died in office as censor—would forsake the attitudes and precepts of Drusus the Censor. Of impeccable plebeian-noble ancestry, a member of the College of Pontifices, enormously wealthy, connected by blood and marriage to the patrician houses of Servilius Caepio, Cornelius Scipio and Aemilius Lepidus, young Marcus Livius Drusus ought to have evolved into a pillar of the ultra-conservative faction which controlled the Senate—and therefore controlled Rome. That this had not happened was pure chance; Drusus had been present as a tribune of the soldiers at the battle of Arausio, when the patrician consular Quintus Servilius Caepio had refused to co-operate with the New Man Gaius Mallius Maximus, and in consequence the legions of Rome and her Italian Allies had been annihilated by the Germans in Gaul-across-the-Alps.

  When Drusus had returned from Gaul-across-the-Alps, he cherished two new factors in his life; one, the friendship of the Marsian nobleman Quintus Poppaedius Silo, and the other, the knowledge that the men of his own class and background—in particular his father-in-law Caepio—had no appreciation of or respect for the efforts of the soldiers who died at Arausio, be they noble Romans, or Italian auxiliaries, or Roman capite censi.

  This was not to say, however, that young Marcus Livius Drusus immediately espoused the aims and aspirations of a true reformer; he was too much a product of his class. But he—like other Roman noblemen before him—had been exposed to an experience which made him think. It was said that the fate of the Brothers Gracchi had been decided when the elder, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus—a scion of the highest nobility in Rome—had journeyed as a young man through Etruria and seen the public lands of Rome in the control of a mere handful of rich Roman men who grazed it using chain gangs of slaves locked up each night in the infamous barracks known as ergastula. Where, Tiberius Gracchus had asked himself, were the smallholder Romans who ought to be in possession of these lands, earning a fruitful living and breeding sons for the army? Product of his class though he was, Tiberius Gracchus had begun to think—and, being a product of his class, he was endowed with a strong sense of right as well as an overwhelming love for Rome.

  Seven years had gone by since the battle of Arausio, seven years during which Drusus had entered the Senate, served as quaestor in Asia Province, been forced to house his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law's family after the disgrace of the father Caepio, become a priest of the State religion, productively gardened his personal fortune, seen and heard the disastrous events which led to the murder of Saturninus and his colleagues, and fought on the side of the Senate against Saturninus when he attempted to make himself King of Rome. Seven years during which Drusus had played host to Quintus Poppaedius Silo many times, listened to him talk—and continued himself to think. It was his ardent ambition to solve the vexed question of the Italians in a way properly Roman, entirely peaceful, and pleasing to both sides; to this end he quietly devoted his energies, unwilling to make his intentions public until he had found that ideal solution.

  The Marsian Silo was the only man who knew the direction Drusus's mind was taking, and Silo trod with exquisite delicacy, too shrewd and too prudent to commit the mistake of pushing Drusus, of becoming too articulate about his own point of view, which was somewhat different from Drusus's. The six thousand men of the legion Silo had commanded at Arausio had died almost to the last noncombatant, and they had been Marsians, not Romans; it was the Marsi had sired them, the Marsi had armed them, the Marsi had paid for their upkeep in the field. An investment in humanity, time, and money that Rome had neither acknowledged afterward, nor offered compensation for.

  Whereas Drusus dreamed of a general enfranchisement for the whole of Italy, Silo dreamed of secession from Rome, of a completely independent and united nation composed of all Italy that was not in the hands of the Romans—Italia. And when Italia came into existence—as Silo had vowed it would—the Italian peoples who comprised it would go to war against Rome and win, absorb Rome and the Romans into this new nation, together with all of Rome's territories abroad.

  Silo was not alone, and he knew he was not alone. During the past seven years he had journeyed all over Italy and even into Italian Gaul, sniffing out men of like mind and discovering that they were not thin on the ground. They were all leaders of their nations or peoples, and of two different kinds; those who—like Marius Egnatius, Gaius Papius Mutilus, and Pontius Telesinus—came from ancient noble families prominent in their nations; and those who— like Marcus Lamponius, Publius Vettius Scato, Gaius Vidacilius, and Titus Lafrenius—were relative New Men of present importance. In Italian dining rooms and Italian studies the talks had proceeded, and the fact that almost all the talking was done in Latin was not felt to be sufficient reason to forgive Rome her crimes.

  The concept of a united Italian nation was not perhaps a novel one, but certainly it had never before been discussed as a viable alternative by the various Italian leaders. In the past, all hopes had been pinned upon gaining the full Roman franchise, becoming a part of a Rome which stretched undivided along the whole length and breadth of Italy; so senior was Rome in her partnership with her Italian Allies that they had thought along Roman lines—wanted to espouse Roman institutions, wanted to see their blood, their fortunes, their lands become a full and equal part of Rome.

  Some of those who participated in the talks blamed Arausio, but there were those who blamed the mounting lack of support for the Italian cause among the Latin Rights communities, who now were beginning to regard themselves as a cut above mere Italians. Those blaming the Latin Rights communities could point with truth to an ever-increasing enjoyment of Latin Rights exclusivity, a need in the Latin Rights people to keep one segment of the peninsular populace inferior to themselves.

  Arausio of course had been the culmination of decades of a soldier mortality which had seen the entire peninsula grow shorter and shorter of men, with all the concomitant evils of farms and businesses abandoned or sold for debt, and too few children and men young enough to work hard. But that soldier mortality had equally affected Romans and Latins too, so could not bear the entire blame. There were festering resentments against Roman landlords—the rich men who lived in Rome and farmed vast tracts called latifundia using only slave labor. There were too many cases of Roman citizens blatantly abusing Italians—employing their power and influence to flog the undeserving, take women who did not belong to them, and confiscate smallholdings to swell their own lands.

  Just what had swayed the majority of those talking Italian secession away from wanting to force Rome to give them full citizenship and toward the formation of a separate and independent nation was unclear, even to Silo. His own conviction that secession was the only way had sprung out of Arausio, but those with whom he talked had not been at Arausio. Perhaps, he thought, this new determination to break away from Rome stemmed from sheer tiredness, a rooted feeling that the days when Rome gave away her precious citizenship were over, that the situation as it was at the moment was the way things were always going to be in the future. Insult had piled on top of injury to a point where life under Rome looked to an Italian unbearable, intolerable.

  In Gaius Papius Mutilus, the leader of the Samnite nation, Silo found a man who seized upon the possibility of secession almost frantically. For himself, Silo did not hate Rome or Romans, only his own people's predicament; but Gaius Papius Mutilus belonged to a people who had been Rome's most obdurate and implacable foes since the tiny Roman community athwart the salt route of the Tiber had first begun to show its teeth. Mutilus hated Rome and Romans with every string that tied his heart, with every thought that grew to consciousness—and every thought that lay below it. He was a true Samnite, yearning to see every Roman ever born obliterated from the pages of history. Silo was Rome's adversary. Mutilus was Rome's enemy.

  Like all congresses w
here the common cause was great enough to override every objection and every practical consideration, the Italian men who gathered at first merely to see if anything could be done quickly decided there was only one thing to be done—secede. However, every one of them knew Rome better than to think Italia could come into being without a war; for that reason, no one contemplated making any kind of declaration of independence for some years to come. Instead, the leaders of the Italian Allies concentrated upon preparing to make war upon Rome. It would require an enormous effort, huge sums of money— and more men than the years immediately after Arausio could possibly provide. A firm date was neither set nor mentioned; for the time being, while the Italian boy-children grew up, every atom of energy and money available was to go into the making of arms and armor, the stockpiling of sufficient quantities of war materials to make war with Rome—and a successful outcome—feasible.

  Not much was ready to hand. Almost all the Italian soldier casualties had occurred far from Italy itself, and their arms and armor never seemed to reach home again, chiefly because it was Rome picked them up from the battlefield whenever possible—and naturally Rome forgot to label them "Allied." Some arms could be legitimately purchased, but not nearly enough to equip the hundred thousand men Silo and Mutilus thought the new Italia would need to beat Rome. Therefore arming was a surreptitious business, and proceeded very slowly. Years would have to go by before the target could be met.

  To make things more difficult, every undertaking had to be carried out beneath the noses of many people who would, did they learn what was going on, report immediately to someone Roman, or directly to Rome. The Latin Rights colonies clearly could not be trusted, any more than could wandering Roman citizens. So centers of activity and caches of equipment were concentrated in poor and remote areas far from Roman roads and travelers, far from Roman or Latin colonies. Every way the Italian leaders turned, they encountered mountainous difficulties and dangers. Yet the work of arming went on, and recently the work of training new soldiers had been added to it; for some Italian lads were growing up.